Chase The Clouds Away — A Saguaro Haibun

Destination: Saguaro National Park. Driving west across portions of West Texas is a painful experience. Looking around, the landscape is devoid of nearly everything — no mountains, no lakes, no grass, no features, not even a tumbleweed. More akin to a moonscape: dry, boring, and monotonous. New Mexico scenery provides an improvement, but my destination lies on the other side of Tucson. Up ahead, a mountain peak grows on the horizon; although it’s much further away than imagined. Soaring 9,159 feet into the sky, Mount Lemmon defies most preconceived notions regarding desert life in southern Arizona. Unless you have been there, it’s hard to imagine a snow skiing resort sitting just 100 miles from the Mexico border.

Out past Old Tucson, the road turns north into Saguaro National Park – the home of huge cacti. The dusty air creates a faint haze, blurring the landscape, except where the giant Saguaros stand tall, piercing the horizon. The muted colors grow richer as I venture further into the park. The sunlight intensifies the vibrant orange rocks, the yellow wild flowers amidst the sage colored undergrowth, and the signature green of the Saguaro.

Mighty Saguaro
Silhouette against the sky
King of the desert

The park trail provides visitors with an up close and personal encounter with the park’s namesake attraction. Calling Saguaro cactus big is an understatement. They typically grow to a height of 40-60 feet, easily dwarfing a large 2-story home. They can live for 150 to 200 years, spending the first 30 or so years as an upright cylinder before sprouting their first appendage.

Off in the distance, the faint rumble of an approaching storm breaks the silence. The clouds cast a giant shadow on the earth below, changing the hue of the desert scenery. It’s like a foreign presence is arriving, and I can almost hear small animals scurrying for shelter.

Watching clouds roll in
Eeriness envelops me
Just before the rain

Rain begins, slowly at first, more like a drizzle, then gradually builds to a steady downpour. No wind to speak of, although the fast moving clouds tricks the senses into a false narrative that wind is present. A huge bolt of lightning lights up the darkened sky. A few seconds later, the eerie silence is shattered by the crack of thunder. It’s now raining in the desert.

Blue sky can be seen off in the distance through the raindrops. The sun peaks under the clouds, casting its rays onto the limbs of the Saguaros. A rainbow makes its grand entrance, getting more vivid by the second, as a gentle rain continues to fall.

Scenery changing
Desert rainbow has arrived
Can’t believe my eyes

With the threat of lightning moving beyond me, I get out of the car to better experience the steam rising from the hot roadway, and the sound of mother earth gulping down her newly provided liquid nourishment. All of my senses are now in play: my ears picking up every audible nuance; my nose enjoying the petrichor of post-rain wet earth to the point I swear my tongue can taste it; my body feeling heat from the ground, while my face greets the temporary coolness of the freshly washed air; and my eyes are feasting on the visual cornucopia of a rainbow in the desert among the Saguaro in the rain.

My mind grows numb trying to process the simultaneous experiences of the surreal environment I am submerged in. I get back into my car and fire up the engine. The sound system comes on, and Chuck Mangione’s “Chase the Clouds Away” starts playing – the perfect sound track and finishing touch on a most memorable afternoon.

Saguaro Cactus
Desert Rain Surrealism
Chase the Clouds Away

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This instrumental is musical poetry to me. If my website had a theme song, this would be it.

I bought Chuck Mangione’s Chase The Clouds Away album about 1976. This haibun describes a portion of my road trip from Austin to Tucson in 1982, and therefore the “sound system” mentioned in it was a state-of-the-art cassette tape deck. Since that day in 1982, my mind immediately returns to that memorable afternoon whenever I hear this song. I listened to the rest of the album (probably more than once) as I continued my adventure in the park.

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Photo Credit: Greg McCown, Saguaro Pictures, as appeared in Men’s Journal Lightning, rainbow and cactus align perfectly for photographer

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Updated, revised, and hopefully improved on March 4, 2021 for linking to dVerse Poets Pub – Open Link Night #285: On This Day…, hosted by Linda Lee Lyberg.

Original version published February 19, 2021 in response to Linda Kruschke’s Haibun Paint Chip Poetry Prompt.

HAIBUN (hie’-bun, the ”u” pronounced as in “put”) A Japanese form in which a prose text is interspersed with verse, specifically haiku (three lines containing a total of seventeen syllables). A haiku typically appears at the end of a haibun, but other haiku may appear earlier, even at the beginning. Haibun often takes the form of a diary or travel journal. — Definition from the poetry dictionary by John Drury.

THE CHALLENGE: What I would like you to do is write a haibun in the form of a travel journal or diary entry. It must be nonfiction. I want to hear about your adventures. End your poem with a haiku (for those of you who were hoping for haiku this week, you won’t be disappointed). You can include additional haiku if you like. The paint chip words and phrases that you have to work with are before the rain, mountain peak, supernova, tumbleweed, tropical, in the dark, and dust bunny.

See more Paint Chip Poetry.